A changing Gulf Stream off the East Coast has destabilized frozen methane deposits trapped under nearly 4,000 square miles of seafloor, scientists reported Wednesday. And since methane is even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas, the researchers said, any large-scale release could have significant climate impacts. [NBC]
“It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents,” [researchers] noted. “Our estimate … may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally.”
… “We may approach a turning point” from a warming driven by man-made carbon dioxide to a warming driven by methane, Jurgen Mienert, the geology department chair at Norway’s University of Tromso, told NBC News.
“The interactions between the warming Arctic Ocean and the potentially huge methane-ice reservoirs beneath the Arctic Ocean floor point towards increasing instability,” he added.
Job growth in the U.S. solar industry, fueled by falling panel prices, will outpace employment in wind energy, which faces the looming expiration of a federal credit, according to a report from CleanEdison Inc. [Bloomberg]
In early October, E&E News and the MIT Energy Initiative held a wide-reaching energy and climate debate between surrogates from the two campaigns. The debate between Aldy and Cass was fascinating and substantive. [Wonk Blog]
Of the roughly 50,000 words spoken in this month’s three presidential debates, none were “climate change,” ‘’global warming” or “greenhouse gas.” [Associated Press]
PBS’ Frontline recently aired a documentary titled “Climate of Doubt,” examining how conservative groups, frequently funded by the fossil fuel industry, have pushed Republicans to reject the scientific consensus on manmade global warming. Media Matters looks back at how Fox News has contributed to that “Climate of Doubt.” [Media Matters]
Photographs of a dead Sperm Whale in the Gulf of Mexico offer a rare glimpse into how many whales came into close contact with the gushing BP well during the oil spill. They also show Obama administration officials tightly controlling information about whales and other wildlife caught up in the disaster. [Washington Post]
Hurricane Sandy made landfall in Jamaica on Wednesday afternoon, and it is increasingly likely to turn into a massive — potentially even historic — storm with the potential to spread hazards ranging from coastal flooding to high winds across a wide area from the Carolinas northward to New England. [Climate Central]
Lord Monckton had declared that he will shortly be presenting the results of a paper on climate economics, namely a hypothesis that it is up to 50 times more costly to try to prevent global warming today than to pay the cost of adapting to its consequences the day after tomorrow. [Gibraltar Chronicle]
The UK cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than any other European country last year, over-achieving on targets under the Kyoto protocol on climate change. [Guardian]
Major importers in Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan and top buyer Japan, have turned away from the United States as U.S. corn prices soared to record highs this summer, buying feed from South America and producers in the Black Sea region. [Reuters]
A project to help track Arctic climate change using volunteers to transcribe U.S. ship logs online was launched on Wednesday by the National Archives and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [Reuters]
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
The link to NBC story re Gulf Stream and methane release takes you to a thinkprogress “page not found” page. However I found two articles about this if they are the source for NBC.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346009/description/Gulf_Stream_might_be_releasing_seafloor_methane
http://www.nature.com/news/seismic-signs-of-escaping-methane-under-the-sea-1.11652
Thx!
Additional energy and climate headlines for 10/25 are posted at http://www.marcaccicomms.com/news/energy-and-environment-news-roundup-10-25-12/
BUt when we read the news about the science and observation of methane we are in collective denial. Like the 3 apes which do not want to see, hear or talk about the possible dangers, let alone actions to prevent the worst.
We need now war time affords to change anything at all and instead we accelerate carbon emission and do everything “as a species” to make things worse, to release large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with consequences so grave that it threaten the survival of our species and most others on the planet.
Came across this paper from 2003 on the end permian extinction yesterday. The abstract states:
“The biggest mass extinction of the past 600 million years (My), the end-Permian event (251 My ago), witnessed the loss of as much as 95% of all species on Earth. Key questions for biologists concern what combination of environmental changes could possibly have
had such a devastating effect, the scale and pattern of species loss, and the nature of the recovery. New studies on dating the event, contemporary volcanic activity, and the anatomy of the environmental crisis
have changed our perspectives dramatically in the past five years. Evidence on causation is equivocal, with support for either an asteroid impact or mass volcanism, but the latter seems most probable. The extinction model involves global warming by 6C and huge input of light carbon into the ocean atmosphere system from the eruptions, but especially from gas hydrates,leading to an ever-worsening positive-feedback loop,
the ‘runaway greenhouse’.”
I hadn’t realised that the warming was 6C approximately at that time, something quite possible on our current path.
http://webh01.ua.ac.be/funmorph/raoul/macroevolutie/Benton2003.pdf
Hartmann – Caught? Fake conservative identities re-writing the web? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mb4GrHQ_G5Y#!
The above should be a new comment..
Yes, Spike there might be a scenario evolving – after a threshold which creates a certain situation which is destroying the food webs or general integral environments. This could be originating from large sources of methane, either from deposits already available or through pathways of methanogenesis.
The failure of the debaters to mention climate change was a decision made by the campaigns’ staffs, and probably mutually agreed upon. This was negligent and shameful.
The AP piece on the 50,000 words in the presidential debates included, “With fewer than half of Americans believing that human activity contributes to global warming, according to Pew Research,” without linking to the Pew source which is more nuanced.
In the Pew study, 67% of Americans “say there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer,” and “42% say the warming is mostly caused by human activity, such as burning fossil fuels.”
The 42% is an increase over previous samples. In the most recent Pew report, only “19% say it is mostly caused by natural patterns in the earth’s environment.”
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2388/global-warming-climate-change-solid-evidence-human-activity-earth-warmer
Incorrect link for “Photographs of a dead Sperm Whale in the Gulf of Mexico…” A correct link can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/sperm-whale-dead-gulf-of-mexico-bp-oil-spill_n_2010221.html
An Epic Bark Beetle Feeding Frenzy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-reese-halter/an-epic-bark-beetle-feedi_b_2007574.html#postComment
A very good update . With details how the trees tell the beetles they are under attack.
Although, I don’t really think it actually takes a psychic to recognize we have a climate problem, it might help for everyone to at least admit what if….For at least a couple of years now I’ve tried to post and comment even to blog what to some might seem rather incompatible with their daily routine. But I have brought up the fact that seems to elude the very astute leaders in the climate debate, the Co2 represents the inital spark, but the sequence of events is only the begining of the phenomenon yet to come.If one were to start right now there would be no stopping it, it would cost more than all the wars earth has had since day one. The equiptment would require massive amounts of financial, manufacturing, and labor support,the co-operation of many countries to achieve any results;but this would eventually only slow the process down. There is no way to stop this change, but it seems as though only a few can feel that we are racing head first at an acclerated rate;into a process that might be so overwhelming there can be no survivors. So let me reiterate once again. It was some time ago when in the Gulf of Mexico a deep diver submersible filmed a layer of floating material near the floor of the sea, it was as an island only it was thousands of feet down, covered with life forms seeming to be eating its very substance. It was found to be frozen methane gas, literally vast islands of it; truth is there are isolated zones containing enormous, quantities of methane gas in every ocean and sea. This is part of an equation, of basicaly under water(remember this). As the climate changes, and accelerates we can witness the vast plains from the northen hemisphere,encircling the entire planet, again frozen methane in the frozen tundra and permafrost regions all across Russia Canada etc. We’ve done it to ourselves and if you check you’ll see at no other time in the worlds history has such a dramatic,accelerated climate cycle occured. These cycles are said to occur every 10 to 15 thousand years and takes several thousand years to accomplish, but apparently these cycles have’nt melted the glaciers having ice way older by many , many thousands of years than the cycles themselves, looking for the end of the cycle will be the rise in the temperature of the oceans, and the release of the methane gas stored there , the flow of the oceans will cease. The weather will become so violent the best home will be a bunker, but those of you that can afford to will have the same fate to look forward to, its like everything else we’er in this togeather, the rest of the world seems to see the light, its only the USA, who does’nt recognize Mother Nature as a threat. Our West will be a desert soon, but irrigation pipe lines are far to expensive to install but oil pipe lines cover the planet. So prepare for another year of floods from the great lakes down, same water could be stored in lakes in our western drought areas,but again who really cares. Oh if you think the BP oil spill was bad be prepared for damage that will make it look like a drop of oil in a bucket, there are thousands of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, how many will survive a major methane gas release? How many are the kind that free float? Do you know what happens to a floating object when gas comes up from under neath it?
Re “Do you know what happens to a floating object when gas comes up from under neath it?”
Buoyancy..
Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water;[30][31][32] any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane eruptions (sometimes called “mud volcanoes”) may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.
Publications by the USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge area, off the southeastern United States coast.[33] However, according to another of their papers, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle#Methane_hydrates
Oh, the methane destabilization is terrible, terrible news. More fuel to the fire. We need to stop while we still can.
If the methane releases really get going, won’t it be “game over” very quickly? How can we be so passive? Grief.
I know the methane plume story from the waters off of Eastern Siberia in the arctic ocean was many months ago now. I thought it was big news, that small plume inside of one year had grown to kilometers wide massive plumes. YET, since reading the initial story, I have heard nothing but silence from the western media.
In fact, google search will have trouble even turning up the original reports.
I don’t know why, or how, but I suspect that a coordinated campaign to kill this story has taken place.
The Russian scientists who released the story were reporting themselves as shocked by the vast scale of the new releases, YET, again we have seen silence.
Anyone else seen any follow up news? I don’t even know if the Russian scientists are continuing to monitor this situation. It seems logical that their report of warming sea temperatures and the big new releases of methane are only the beginning. It is not as if water temps are decreasing again. This year saw a record melt, that would seem to indicate that these methane plumes have also increased. Yet all is silence! Wonder WHY?